A small community, broken families, a bloody murder, and an ending you won’t see coming

When Frida Delaney returns home to New Zealand after a self-imposed exile the last thing she expects to find is her neighbour’s bloody body and to be caught up in a murder inquiry. An inquiry that reaches into the darkest side of politics, financial conspiracy and families.

She just wants to sort out her own life after her mother’s death, but can’t stand by and let someone she thinks is innocent be unjustly accused. But the closer she gets to the truth the more dangerous she is to the murderer. But is there one killer or a conspiracy?

Her ex-policeman father, Jack, had often told her that people and places were irretrievably broken after the crime squad came through. Secrets were unearthed and lies exposed. Lives dismembered.

A CONFIDENTIAL AGREEMENT is one of those books that you really want to work. Populated with some really engaging characters, built around a strong central premise, it's let down in the end by a lack of firm editing and direction. Overly wordy, there's a tendency to disappear off on tangents and down rabbit holes of diversion which detract too often, and too overwhelmingly from the main plot lines, hampering the reader's ability to connect with that central premise.